Know Your Enemy

You're Blocked, Please Walk Through

"You're on the list!" screamed a friend at approximately 1.43am on August 23. Now the thing is, in my entire life, I've been on two lists -- one in upper kindergarten and the other in the second year of college -- and neither of those is really CV material. "They want you bumped off Twitter", continued the friend. "Who have you gone and pissed off, yaar?" Now this was a seriously difficult question when the sun isn't up yet.

As I slide-showed through a list of folks who were likely to have taken "umbrage" (I heard that word 134 times yesterday, no kidding) to my words on Twitter, another friendly soul sent me a copy of the document that rounded my name up with a group of others. My first thought: Cool! You know how we patrakars are. We see our names in print, and it's almost Pavlovian to feel your heart rise a bit. Then I saw the severe "RESTRICTED" on top of the page, and some coolly no-nonsense instructions from a Department of Telecom bureaucrat to "block" these Twitter handles. (Quick note to mind: Some guy wants us all blocked, some guy wants us to know. Leak. I love how governments function.)

At about 3AM, swept out in the undertow of angst from my followers, I began to worry that I wasn't worrying enough. And this was one mountain I simply couldn't climb. Because let's be frank, I was having the pudding and eating it too: on the one hand my name was on this sinister Orwellian kaagaz secretly asking internet companies to stonewall access to my Twitter account. And on the other hand, my Twitter account was working just fine. Helpful strangers -- and I've met way too many to name in the last 24 hours -- ran me through the tech stuff of just how I had been blocked, a fine little soup of acronyms and jargon that I nodded along to (tip: when they're helping you with a sense of genuine concern, don't sound like a moron, just nod).

It was a perplexing day: my trolls forgave me, my friends carried me on their shoulders and a few guys (total credit for ingenuity), accused me of orchestrating the "block" to mask my "ingrained pro-Congress inclinations". Another conspiracy theory: I was bunged into the list so that it didn't look like the government was going after only folks with a stated right-wing inclination ("you were easy meat, Shiv"). Yet another: That I had jammed the system up with too much firebombing and irreverence, and the government had reacted like a "radar with hydrochloric acid flung on it" (I hope the guy who said this to me goes on to write Clancy-style books). Someone helpfully offered that as a defence journalist, I was already red-cornered, and this was just the logical next step (Damn! All those aircraft pictures I've been broadcasting to the world!). Of course there were the obligatory tweets from Pakistan and China hanging me out to dry. It was their moment, and I wasn't going to spoil it for them. Lip-smacking stuff.

But, seriously (there's another phrase I was bombed with about 243 times yesterday), none of this is very funny. If the government moving to block me and the others without being open about it wasn't Big Brother enough (principles of natural justice?, as a senior lawyer said on a TV discussion last night), I still don't know for sure (and I suspect nor do the others), why my name is on that list. I've tried to be anguished about it, but like I said, it just isn't happening. And I think there's this rather klutzy elephant-in-high-heels sort of feel to the way the suits have gone about doing this. They've clearly lumbered through this without much real thought. We've all had a good laugh at how silly this whole ISP blocking profiles thing is, but then Twitter has been asked to pull the plug on us entirely, don't forget (nope, not worried). I had a brief bit of irritation when I realised that the internet provider I subscribe to at home, and who regularly over-bills me, had gone ahead and blocked my Twitter profile.

I've tried to have grand thoughts in the last 24 hours, about just how heavy-handed yet clumsy this whole idea of having people sneakily blocked is. But I haven't managed that either. Because here's the thing: people have been having those thoughts for me. One person dryly noted, "Shiv Aroor finally has some relevance". Another grudgingly sniped, "Of all the people, this Aroor fellow had to be given so much importance". And on the cooler side, there was a torrent of "Don't trust a journalist until he is blocked by the UPA Government!" The newspaper ran a piece in the afternoon calling me a journalist "sympathetic to the far right in India", which gave me my first laugh-out-loud of August 23.

Then someone earnestly inquired, "Shiv, have you informed your parents?" Boom. Nope. My mom's the kind of person who worries when I say I'm going for a shower, so I'm thinking the e-mail I send to them on this blocking issue will have to be masterfully underplayed and made to look like it's some sort of achievement (will be enlisting the assistance of helpful souls who've tweeted me in the last 24 hours for this side task.)

When you've got the State on your back, especially for something that remains nebulous and tantalizingly unclear, it's a little unnerving. Then there was the suggestion from India's new Home Minister that Twitter handles of those who caused riots have been blocked -- hey, that's a real aspersion there. So they're saying I indulged in hate speech and goaded folks into sticking knives into each other? It probably doesn't occur to the government that I wouldn't have a job, never mind a Twitter account, if I even considered saying anything inflammatory. Or is this about interpretation? Or about rumour mongering? Or is it just monumental clumsiness?

See? Nebulous. And I think that's just the way they like it.

I'll end by saying something I tweeted yesterday, and it was one of the first thoughts I had: No one gets to call me #PaidMedia ever again.

Brother! you must have been critical of or exposing Congress/Islamist/Leftist gang of three and their 'anti-national' acts and policies of past few years..... you broke their prescribed domain of 'freedom of speech' and thus became a threat to their status quo....

Truth

India

August 27, 2012

Some time back I complained to an ISP that one of my photos on a photo-sharing site, of which the ISP is the parent company, was being unauthorisedly displayed on another web-site hosted by the ISP. Imagine my shock when my original picture got removed from my account on the photo-sharing site as, they said, they had received a complaint (my own) that this was a case of infringement of copyright. They also cautioned me "not to do it again".

I sincerely hope yours was also not a case where another account, with the same handle, was intended to be the target of the removal exercise and your account got terminated, instead.

personne.de.chandigarh

Chandigarh

August 25, 2012

How many of those who left to NE actually use social media like twitter and facebook? Most of those people are uneducated and doing low income jobs without much access to computers. Blocking mass SMS was REASONABLE. But Seriously doesn't the government know the statistics?

Dr.Bharati

Mumbai

August 25, 2012

Govt of any country has massive state power but such power must never be misused. Blocking a young and upright journo like Shiv Aroor is extremely unfair and speaks very poor of mentality and personality of the person who has done it or on whose behest, it has been done. I am upset and distressed. If a mirror shows your face "dirty" pl don't break d mirror, try and search reasons for dat and clean the face to look genuine and bright. Shiv Aroor must be supported by every one.

Col J Sharotri (retd)

Kasauli (Himachal)

jsharotri@gmail.com

August 25, 2012

What a shame on the Indian govt! Do they even know what "Freedom of speech" means?

Dany

Chennai

August 24, 2012

It is sad that freedom of expression is being attacked. Government of India, IT Minister is wrong. You can not become net nanny. Fight with the blogger Mr. Minister with your side of the story. Please do not persecute the messenger.

ali khan

August 24, 2012

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In a world where history is always the enemy, it's a good idea to fear the worst. Know Your Enemy gives you a dark, portentous sense of that vague concept, we collectively call the future. And why the globalised world without walls is a failed ideal.

Shiv Aroor is defence correspondent at Headlines Today, and has made it his job to know enemies of all kinds. The ones that wage war on the country, the ones that murder justice, and also the ones that print lies on our tubes of toothpaste.